Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies

We were going to go to the Knoxville Zoo while we were home, but the weather didn't want to agree with us. It rained the whole second week we were here, so on a whim we decided to go to the aquarium in Gatlinburg. The kids are always begging to see the fish in the pet area of Walmart, so I figured they would enjoy this. PLUS it has a huge tunnel you go through :) It's definitely one of my favorite places to go. Mimi came with us too! Afterwards, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for a late lunch.

Looking at the drifters

Possibly the most adorable part: Garden eels

Seeing a shark for the first time!

Cool little quote on the wall.

All the fishies!

I think this was Nick's favorite fish: Sawfish

It was in the tunnel and it was huge!

The sharks were all over the tunnel!

In the discovery part of the aquarium, you can go into the tanks and touch horseshoe crabs.

Pretty jellies.

Inside a shark bubble. This picture cracks me up. My husband is a giant kid :)

This shark looked like he would be fuzzy.

By the ray tank! When you go upstairs you can pet a ray, but they wouldn't come close enough :(

I was really disappointed with our service at Hard Rock. The food was great, but the service was awful. I only tipped 10% - our waitress was more concerned with her large party at the other table and she was the fakest friendly I have ever SEEN - it was really annoying. Mind you it wasn't busy and our waitress had 3 tables (including ours).

I tried a strawberry basil lemonade.

Playing around while we waited for our food.

The funniest propaganda poster ever!

My red, white, & blue burger - but without the blue! It's a burger with buffalo sauce, blue cheese, and an onion ring. I got mine with jack cheese instead. It was really good. I loved their fries too.

Nick got the legendary 10 oz. burger with buffalo sauce and I want to say bacon?

Probably the coolest part of this particular Hard Rock Cafe is that they have the Rev's drums. RIP! Avenged Sevenfold is one of our favorite bands - shoot all of us kids in the family love them. This was just so cool to see his ACTUAL drums up there.